a tune I need help with

[andrewjohnsson40]

Hi!
I went to an accordion teacher (my first lesson) and he taught me play Spanien on the piano accordion. Heres the sheet music: https://sinorrtalje.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/spanien-noter.jpg

It is bassically just the I chord for two bars, V7 chord for one bar, I chors for one bar. I think you get it. We did the tune in F.
Is this a common key?

I played F-F chord-F-F chord for F.
I played C-C7 chord-C-C7 chord for C7.
Any nice simple ideas for the LH? What is your expert advice?

My RH bassically just played thirds with melody on top. For the F note I played C-F (a fourth).
I find E-G on F chord being a bit strange sounding. E works in jazz with Fmaj7 but this is not jazz. What do you think?

And can anyone tell me how to do the LH I did by on the piano? I tried to do it on my piano but I just couldnt figure out this nice comping.

 

[donn]

Hi!
We did the tune in F.
Is this a common key?

The key of love.

My RH bassically just played thirds with melody on top. For the F note I played C-F (a fourth).
I find E-G on F chord being a bit strange sounding. E works in jazz with Fmaj7 but this is not jazz. What do you think?

RIght. The third below isnt right for the first note. Nor is it called for in the second note - at least, I think it would sound odd that way. The whole first half of this little tune is I, and if you want to add treble harmonies Id stick to that triad, in your key F-A-C. For example you could simply repeat that C. But I have only these four bars to go by, I am not familiar with the tune and dont know at all where you might want to go with it. [Edit] If parallelism is your stylistic direction, put the harmony notes above the melody. Thats done, and results should be acceptable here. [/Edit]

On the left hand, you may of course use the usual alternate bass notes, for example you might alternate C with the F chord, and on the second half of the C chord measure you might try the E counterbass above C, and see how that returns to F. [Edit] (Or there are a wide variety of other chord progressions that could work with this melody.) [/Edit]

You might also think about different meters for this sequence - 4/4 as notated, but also try cut time with two beats to the measure, just to know how the difference feels - unless of course youre already well versed in these matters.

 

[andrewjohnsson40]

Why only stick to chord tones?
Is 1-3 or 1-5 in LH the best alternative when playing simple accordion? I like country music so I'm used to 1-5.

This tune is actually only 4 bars being repeated twice. Guess it's just a tune to help people learn how to play music.
I just wanna take this melody and make something nice out of it. One could do a 20 minutes jam session just bassed on this tune if one make it more fun.

You mentioned paralellism. Would double thirds break any rule of classical harmony?
And in the classical harmony books you often see examples of four-part harmony. I guess this comping I use is sone kinda stride LH. I guess the rules of SATB can't be applied here in the sane way it's done if it really were SATB. What should one think about this?

 

[donn]

Why only stick to chord tones?

The first time I looked at it, I was looking at your third-below harmony idea. That really didnt work out, at all, for me. Why? Well ... 1. as you say, its clearly wrong on the first note, so you dropped to the 4th instead. 2. From there, the next note with harmony minor third below is not discordant, but because it isnt part of a harmony pattern like it would have been if the first note also had third-below harmony, it sounds like were doing this because this is part of a fundamental harmonic change at this point in the tune. It isnt.

If you switch to a parallel harmony above, which works, then its more clear whats going on - someones into parallel harmony, fine, thats a common musical gimmick, these two lines are just running together and arent intended to at any point establish some harmonic structure.

Thats an explanation I invented, after a Friday night social event where we celebrated Negroni Week. The underlying reality is, I didnt like how it sounded with a minor third harmony under the second note, but it was OK when harmony for the whole sequence was minor thirds above. There may be underlying rules that govern these things, I dont know and dont really care.

Is 1-3 or 1-5 in LH the best alternative when playing simple accordion? I like country music so Im used to 1-5.

The best is what sounds the best. Sometimes thats the alternate bass, sometimes its the counter bass. The most common Stradella configuration provides the major third and leaves you to find the minor third several buttons away, where mine is the French style, 3 bass rows with the minor third on the top row. Maybe this means that in some typical at the time French repertoire, the 3rd was more heavily used, compared to elsewhere where the 5th was more common. Or maybe it doesnt mean any such thing. Anyway, one important detail is how the notes fit together, to make a line. The accordion fosters a notion of music as a sequence of chords and a melody, which is very artificial. We hear lines implied by those chords, its a moving tonal structure where the change means more than the state. That movement depends a lot on how you choose bass notes.

You mentioned paralellism. Would double thirds break any rule of classical harmony?
And in the classical harmony books you often see examples of four-part harmony. I guess this comping I use is sone kinda stride LH. I guess the rules of SATB cant be applied here in the sane way its done if it really were SATB. What should one think about this?

I got no idea what youre talking about. Someone else is going to have to step in on rules of classic harmony, etc. I figure if I break any rules without noticing it, they werent very good rules. I usually have no idea what notes Im playing, so even if I were interested in rules it would be hard for me to apply them.